


Kings of infinite space

by kvikindi



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/pseuds/kvikindi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Courfeyrac plans a mock-trial of Hamlet. Bahorel fights a horse-sheep. Jean Prouvaire and Enjolras talk about being ghosts, and being un-delighted by man, and in the end, about not-existing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kings of infinite space

 

 In March, the law students held a mock-trial of Hamlet. Enjolras had been sulky about it for weeks: "They will acquit him," he said, "because he is an aristocrat, and in any case, I fail to see how it is fit to play at administering the law while crime walks openly in the streets; while the people hunger and thirst for justice; while even to apply the name justice _here_ is a mockery-- see here, Courfeyrac, where you have applied the name justice?" He stabbed his finger at the advertisement accusingly.

 Courfeyrac rolled his eyes. "I have said, _Come and see the prince brought to justice,_ an expression that even you must admit is revolutionary. In fact, I strongly suspect that Bossuet has bribed our printer to press it, such is the revolutionary tenor of its rhetoric, and at that point I am bound to ask: with whose money? With whose money has Bossuet bribed our printer?" He paused consideringly. "I rather fear that it may have been mine."

 "Have you been lending Bossuet money?" Combeferre asked with interest, from beside the fire. "There are certainly safer ways to gamble. And, one would have thought, more exciting."

 "It is clear that you have never lent Bossuet money."

 "The goat," Grantaire intoned, without opening his eyes. He was drooped over a table like a marionette at rest.

 "All of the goats," Courfeyrac agreed. He smiled as though in fond reminiscence. "And then Bahorel in the bishop's hat, riding around Saint-Antoine, waving a crozier, blessing his flock--"

 Combeferre put his head in his hands. "I have told and told you all to avoid attention, to try and practice some restraint..."

 "That is quite restrained for Bahorel, and as for Bossuet, it is at least near the midpoint of his restraint." Courfeyrac was still inspecting the flyer. "Grantaire has drawn a very creditable Hamlet. Enjolras, do you see?"

 "I am not interested in Hamlet. I am not interested in participating." Enjolras tossed his flyer on a table. 

 "Come, _everyone_ is, even Le Baron Lugubre." This was how Courfeyrac referred to Marius Pontmercy, when he was in less than gracious moods.

 "That is not an endorsement. Your friend shows no judgement." 

 "Ah, well, he needs your correction! This is an opportunity!"

 "Who is in need of correction?" Bossuet had appeared in the doorway, his arm around the shoulders of Joly, who looked as ever like a resentful cherub. His dark curls were flattened, his nose very pink. "Surely not I. I am beyond correction."

 Joly sniffled and pushed past him, towards the fire. "What my friend Lesgle means," he said, warming his hands, "is that no correction currently exists which could counter the lengths of his depravity."

 "Patently false; your corrections keep very good pace with my depravity," Bossuet said, or rather leered. "If you feel you are falling behind, I can make a few suggestions--"

 Joly gave a squeak. "Lesgle, your hands are cold!"

 Enjolras covered his face with his hands. "Must we," he said, "must we always descend until we reach this level?"

 "Yes," Bossuet said promptly. "We must, and prepare to be astonished if you feel we have reached an abyss already, for Bahorel will shortly grace us with his presence. He is only delayed because he is fighting with a sheep."

 "A horse," Joly corrected.

 "No, indeed; it was shaggy."

 "A sort of horse that looks like a sheep."

 "And how did this horse offend Bahorel?" Combeferre inquired, looking resigned.

 Bossuet considered the question gravely. "Perhaps," he said at length, "its transgression was to appear too sheep-like. Bahorel is a great respecter of categories."

 There was a choking sound that suggested Joly was laughing and trying to muffle the noise in his sleeve. 

 Courfeyrac had donned his coat, and was reaching for his hat. "I am going out to see this epic battle. There must be a witness, as with the fulfillment of prophecy. Combeferre, you are coming."

 "Am I?"

 "We may yet need a doctor."

 "For Bahorel, or for the horse-sheep?"

 Courfeyrac rolled his eyes and reached out for Combeferre's arm, pulling him towards the doorway. They tangled out towards the street, a sliver of laughter trailing behind them from where Combeferre was finally laughing. 

 In their absence, the room felt less occupied. Well, it was; but also it breathed more easily. Bossuet turned and said, "Oh, Jehan! I did not see you there."

 "Hello, Bossuet," Prouvaire said. "Joly." He had been observing from the back of the room for some time, without speaking. He had almost managed to lose himself, to effectively abstain from any effort of self-ness that might drag him towards existence. It had made his eyelids very heavy. "Are you, too, going to prosecute Hamlet?"

 "Oh, Courfeyrac's little game." Bossuet made a dismissive gesture. "Why not? It is the only lawyering I will do in my time, and likely the most honest."

 "And you, Joly?"

 Joly wrinkled his nose. "They want my medical opinion. Combeferre has refused them. He says it is dishonesty to pronounce on a corpse that he has not examined, or on the mind of a man to whom he cannot speak."

 "You disagree."

 "No; I think his opinion quite valid. It is only that I need the practice, when it comes to alienism, and-- well-- it is all in good fun. I think. Surely?"

 "Do not trust his opinion," Bossuet warned Prouvaire, deadpan. "How many times he has spoken of fun, only to produce a leech--!"

 Joly elbowed him. "Lesgle thinks fun must spoil one's health."

 "The best fun always seems to," Bossuet agreed.

 "But you quite liked the Indian body-wheel treatment."

 "That was because it involved your hands on my body."

 "You were concentrating on your _spiritual_ body!"

 "That is certainly what I allowed you to believe."

 They dissolved into bickering that was difficult to follow. It involved-- from what Prouvaire could glean-- philosophical medicine and complicated sexual acts, neither of which sounded appealing. 

 He had not slept with Joly or Bossuet-- or Joly-and-Bossuet, since they came as a team. He thought that he could've-- a certain warmth persisted, a gentle and ongoing welcoming-- but they seemed between them to practice some language too subtle and fast for him to perceive. His own moods changed like storms in summer, in Provence, where you could see the dark winds blow up cloud-banks from the south, alive with skittish lightning, and for miles and miles they would shutter the sky, and then begone, and the fields would be clean. But Joly and Bossuet had more complex weather, the kind you had to live with a long time to perceive. He did not trust himself not to mistake it. He knew his own, and their, vulnerability.

 He leaned back and returned to not-existing. But it was difficult, because Grantaire had now approached him, and indeed had taken a seat, or at least enacted the posture that was as close as Grantaire got to ever taking a seat. (This involved locking his ankles around the backs of two chair legs, rooting his elbows on the table, and draping his upper body in one of a number of contortions. It was a position, he had told Prouvaire, that offered maximal changeability. "Like all of your positions," Prouvaire had said. Grantaire had contemplated this for a moment. "Basically.") He was staring at Prouvaire now with narrowed eyes.

 "Leave me alone," Prouvaire said. "I am not-existing."

 "I will not ask you to clarify that statement; I am sure that you think it is rich with profundity."

 Prouvaire closed his eyes. He _had_ slept with Grantaire, a time or three, and since then Grantaire seemed to think that the two of them enjoyed some intimacy. 

 "Is this a variant on the child's game?" Grantaire inquired. " 'I don't see you, so you can't see me?' "

 "It is not a child's game. I am not a child." Needled, he squirmed in his seat. He could not not-exist if other people addressed him. He could not not-exist if other people made him think. 

 "Ah, and here comes someone who might make you a man!" Grantaire's tone was sardonic.

 Prouvaire's eyes flew open. He shot Grantaire a sharp look which, as he too heard voices in the hall, turned ever-so-slightly betrayed. Grantaire smirked. Prouvaire resented the flush that he could feel burning his cheeks.

 Bahorel burst into the room. "This," he announced, "is my triumph song. I am the emperor of oxes, of drays, of all things that go upon cloven hooves. They are small, and I am great."

 "He defeated the horse," Courfeyrac explained behind him.

 "I defeated all horses, insofar as no man is an island, and no horse, either, and just as the death of one man diminishes me, so too must the bell toll for all the horses. Bring me wine; bring me bread; bring me the bones of the monarchy!"

 "Oh," said Combeferre. "I see that, as I requested, you've taken great pains to temper your speech."

 Bahorel draped one arm around him, and the other around Courfeyrac. "I am a very blacksmith of speech, only it may take some quantity of cold liquid before the tempering is complete."

 "You don't have to be a blacksmith," Bossuet offered. "You could be a chocolate-maker. I'd quite like to see you with a confiserie."

 "Or a physician," Joly chimed in. "Though-- I would fear your cure."

 "Any cure is better than a leech," Bossuet muttered. Joly gave him an evil look.

 "Or..." Courfeyrac wriggled away to snag a flyer. "Be a lawyer, O enemy of lawyers! Only in jest, and only for one day."

 Bahorel dubiously accepted the flyer. His eyes flicked over it. For a moment they strayed off of the paper, towards Prouvaire, who looked sharply away. He felt his cheeks flush further. Grantaire reached out and touched his hair, at first flicking it back from his face, then pensively curling one strand around a finger.

 "Don't," Prouvaire said.

 "What do we think; what do we think? Little Jehan of the skull-cup and dying flowers, little Jehan of the lute, the flute, the oud, of outre poetry... Jehan d'Arc, not a saint after all, likes the meat of the fist, and perhaps the meat of other things?"

 Prouvaire felt his heart pound. He felt hot with fury. He stood abruptly, shaking Grantaire's hand off. "Sorry," he said. "I had a such a late night. I'm not feeling well, still." 

 He suffered Bahorel's embrace, brief and heavy, and a broad hand ruffling his hair; then the ever-attentive chorus of well-wishes, when all he wanted was to get away.

 "I should go as well," Enjolras said. 

 "No; why?" Courfeyrac said, pouting a little.

 "Feuilly's ill; I said I would bring him dinner."

 "All the way across town?"

 Enjolras ducked his head, as though hiding his face. "It really isn't a great encumbrance," he said. "Come, Prouvaire; let us make our escape."

* * *

 

 Their escape was to the ice-like air outside the cafe. Enjolras pushed his hair behind his ears, adjusted his hat. He didn't seem eager to start walking. Prouvaire waited for him to move, feeling cold and rather frightened. Frightened of what? He couldn't say. He often had these sudden fits of fear. He thought that the problem was not with his nature, but rather that the world was a frightening place, and others around him were blind to this aspect. Like, say, if you were blind, and sharks swam by your face, but because you were blind, you knew nothing about it. You were blithely swimming. You felt cheerful and safe.

 Enjolras said, "I think you should come with me."

 "To see Feuilly?" It was not what Prouvaire had expected.

 "No; I have already taken him dinner. That was a lie. I was lying." He seemed faintly proud about this, as though he had managed to carry off some great deceit.

 "Then where?"

 "I thought, to my lodgings."

 "Oh." Prouvaire considered this. "I've nowhere to be, really; I just couldn't--" he gestured to the Musain.

 "No. I know." Enjolras touched his hand very faintly, a light brush of fingers, like a moth's wing. "He doesn't mean anything by it."

 "I know. I know; I like Grantaire, really. Only--"

 "Only."

 "He is looking for some kind of-- of consummation." Prouvaire struggled to speak, to find the words that would mean his unformed thoughts. "Which he does not allow himself, and thus will not allow me. Or others, I suppose. He has a wrong idea of it."

 Enjolras _hm_ ed thoughtfully. 

 Prouvaire sighed. "Perhaps I had better go with you."

 They made their way across the street, past the painted signs and the glazed-glass windows, past the shopfront where the first flowers of spring were now on display, carted up from the South: lavender, violets, peonies. The colors made him feel very strange, as though the rest of the world had been drawn in with ink. He imagined a sort of kinship with them, poor little Southern things-- ripped from their roots in the sun-drenched dirt and shipped far away, to where someone would come and pluck them up because they were wild, and bright, and pretty.

 "You keep flowers, don't you?" Enjolras asked.

 "I try to. They keep dying. I think perhaps they're not meant to be kept."

 "Well. There are other hobbies."

 "Yes," Prouvaire said. He considered. "Chiefly my hobby is thinking about the infinite. And music. I mean, apart from revolution."

 "What about poetry?"

 "Poetry is my occupation. Not-existing is my other hobby."

 He heard Enjolras draw a breath and then in expel it in a great sigh, as though he had been about to speak, but then-- on second thought-- had decided against it. Carefully Enjolras asked, "And what is not-existing?"

 "Oh, it is when you try to become the world, by becoming nothing. I invented it out of a book that I read on Oriental faiths. If you can stop being you, you can be everything at once. And I think, well, the sacrifice is not so great."

 "No," Enjolras said. 

 "Only it is harder than it sounds. The world keeps calling you back, in all sorts of unexpected ways." He gestured around: the smoke from a chimney, gray-white against the Paris slates; men roasting nuts over low fires, horses drawing through the street; a whole world of fragrance and color and sound. Somewhere a child was laughing. The wind lifted Enjolras' golden hair up. It was not golden, not really, Prouvaire thought; it was like half-ripe wheat, before it had darkened, or white sails in the morning, when the early sun turned them ancient-colored. He let himself be enchanted, and then turned. He said, "It is hard to be nothing." 

* * *

 Prouvaire always forgot how bare Enjolras' rooms were. His own were so beautifully cluttered with things that he often had to carefully plot a path through them, as though they were not really his domain, but a wilderness which he happened to inhabit. Enjolras exercised more constraint. He had a bed, a desk, a number of chairs-- always encircled by the fireplace; Enjolras expected his guests to confer about matters revolutionary, and could not imagine why one would sit in a chair, else-- and books lined neatly on their shelves. His rooms had a sense of emptiness to them. Perhaps, Prouvaire thought, it was the same problem with another face: you couldn't believe that Enjolras lived here. It was only a place where he rested at times, a place where he was more than any other place. He was transient in the world, and so was Prouvaire.

 Prouvaire sat on the floor, as he always did, eschewing the chairs and hugging his knees. He watched Enjolras light the fire. "Do you love anybody?" he asked suddenly.

 "I love everybody," Enjolras said. He dusted off his hands. "I love everybody equally."

 "You say that, but you won't look at me when you say it."

 Enjolras stared into the incipient fire. "I believe that saying a thing is what makes it real."

 "It isn't real in your heart?"

 "No. And so, you see, we are all creators. We're responsible for our creations. It is useless to say, 'Well, it just happens to be that...'" He made a sharp gesture.

 " 'It just happens to be that I love you.' Not _you_ , but--" Prouvaire was suddenly superstitious. He couldn't bring himself to say the name.

 "Yes."

 "I think that's a horrible idea."

 Enjolras suppressed a smile very badly. "Your opinion does not surprise me."

 Prouvaire sighed. He stretched out on his back. The bare floor dug into his spine. "Have you any lovers?"

 "I don't know why you should ask me. You know I have not."

 "You might have been subtle."

 "No. Man delights not me--"

 "--no, nor woman neither," Prouvaire finished. He turned his head and regarded Enjolras. In the firelight, the chairs cast long dark shadows, clearly defined, a clean geometry. Night had fallen outside the windows. Down in the streets, a clattering announced the round of an omnibus. Prouvaire could hear two flower-girls arguing: where would they meet their student lovers? Somewhere, he thought, and would end up asleep, trading heartbeats for half of the night. He envied them. He could never seem to sleep-- only alone, at last untouched.  

 The fire cracked as they sat there silently.

 "Will you try him? I mean Hamlet?" Prouvaire asked after a while.

 "No. What for?"

 "Out of interest, I thought. He killed a tyrant."

 "He was a tyrant."

 "And was killed in turn."

 "And so, what? Shall we all be Norwegian?"

 "I'd like that," Prouvaire said thoughtfully. "They herd reindeer. They have very beautiful folk songs. A pianist from Norway taught me."

 Enjolras laughed. "Perhaps under the republic there will be reindeer."

 "Oh, please. But we must not allow Bahorel to fight them." His breath caught in his throat a little. He looked at Enjolras quickly, but Enjolras was pretending not to have noticed. "Grantaire and I were lovers," he said. It changed the subject. "Once. More than once. I'm not sure."

 "You ought not to have done that."

 "What is it you said? --Your opinion does not surprise me." Prouvaire heaved an enormous sigh, rolled over, and propped his chin on his hands. "He thinks that love should be-- I don't know-- that you should do it with your body. I suppose he feels, you know, betrayed. In some sense."

 "And yet--"

 "Yes, I know; I am not the one he wants."

 "That is not what I was going to say." Enjolras was sitting close enough to touch him. He did so, putting a hand to his shoulder comfortingly. It was the lightest of touches. Prouvaire had the thought that perhaps he was afraid if he pressed too hard, left his hand too long, it would stick like that. Then there would be no escape. 

 "Sometimes I think," Prouvaire said, "that I am a ghost in this world. I think that other people will forget me. I push myself on them; I touch their skin; but I never seem to leave any fingerprints. And then I think, well, of course, a ghost wouldn't. And when they reach out, their hands go right through me. What do you think?"

 Enjolras' hand tightened ever-so-slightly on his shoulder. "I think you have spent too much time not-existing."

 "Perhaps."

 "You're not a ghost, Jehan." 

 "How would you know? Have you much experience with ghosts?"

 Enjolras made a small sound of exasperation. He stood. "Come."

 "Why? Where are we going?"

 "To bed."

 "Oh." Prouvaire let himself be pulled to his feet.

 " _Not_ in the way that you imagine, Prouvaire. Aren't you at all discerning?"

 Prouvaire shrugged. He quite liked Enjolras, and he was intrigued by the unimaginability of touching his skin, of seeing his pleasure. It would be like going to Lhasa: a strange and precarious journey. But equally he was relieved by not having to do it. He was quite tired, and found the thought exhausting. 

 They shucked off their outer clothes and climbed into the bed. Enjolras' sheets were very plain. Prouvaire curled between them awkwardly. He did not know how to go to bed with someone in this manner: so cleanly, so quietly. He was used to going to bed with people who kissed every part of his body, who pressed him to the sheets as though he might vanish, as though he might evanesce if they did not exert their strength to hold him, to show him how they desired him. 

 Enjolras slipped in beside him. He looked like an angel: his hair rumpled, coronal, his nightshirt too big and frayed at the seams. Prouvaire caught one cuff, laughing: "You could repair this. Or buy something new; you've the money."

 Enjolras made a dissatisfied noise. "It's not important to me."

 "No; we ghosts, we need no clothes. We know where we're going."

 He did not intend the words to have their effect. Enjolras' eyes grew large; they looked luminous, dark. How was it possible to be the two things? The sadness in them was like a fresco painted of a Medieval saint, a sadness that should not be in the world, that was an artifact of its age. All at once Prouvaire found himself frightened. He reached for Enjolras' hands and clasped them tightly; their fingers tangling, palms pressing desperately. 

 "Please don't," Prouvaire whispered. "Please don't not-exist. Just exist here right now, with me, in our bodies."

 Enjolras half-laughed: a choking sound. "Jehan, I am not playing your game."

 "I know you are not. Pretend for me." He tipped their foreheads together. He could feel Enjolras breathe. They were so close that they might have been kissing. _But we don't need to kiss_ , he thought. _Not we._ His pulse ran up through his fingertips-- and out, he thought, out into the world, into Enjolras. He counted the heartbeats they had between them. It was enough, he thought hazily, although later he would not be sure what he'd meant by "enough." Enough for what? Enough to last until what day? He fell asleep while they were still touching, and woke in the same way: with Enjolras asleep, his breath a whisper on the pillow, and dawn scratching at the window, thin and fey. 

 Prouvaire curled himself closer to Enjolras. There in that paleness, he felt he understood the need to hold a lover, to stake a claim that could not be overwritten by death or fate. "I love everybody," he breathed into the silence. "I love everybody equally." It was possible to think, in that unreal moment, that the words had power. He could not imagine what their practical effect might be, when it was so great a task just to hold one person, to be held by one person. But he closed his eyes and held his breath and waited, waited to see.

**Author's Note:**

> This arrived very circuitously from a prompt by [maraschinocheri](http://maraschinocheri.tumblr.com), who wanted Prouvaire & Bahorel and a mock-trial of Hamlet. Obviously that is... not really what this turned out to be; sorry!


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